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Leader (1850-1860), 16th June 1855, Edition 1 of 2, Supplement to 273, Page 5, June 16, 1855.] THE LEADER. ' 581

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      ~~ " Owen Meredith's Poems. Czytemnestra...

      And not a sail above the bumish'd prores ; | The languid sea , like one outwearied quite , Shrank , dying inward into hollow shores , And breathless harbours , under sandy bars ; And , one by one , down tracts of quivering blue , f _^ _ntTfnl _^ _^ _fr 8 _* ¦ _*•? _Af Wh ° u * _^ eW , Te ° s _clod ' s _& _SJbS 2 _*" ' The spill'd-out sunset did incarnadine AJ , _^ , At last one broke the silence ; and a word . _pS _&?« ad buzz dab out , from mouth to mouth ; _Hrss : _ssz _^ a _^ _$ _ssrjs _^ i In ominous tones , from shaggy beards uncouth : As though some wind had broken from the blurr'd And blazing prison of the stagnant drouth , And stirr'd the salt sea in the stifled south . The long-robed priests stood round ; and , in the gloom , Under black brows , their bright and greedy eyes Shone deathfully ; there was a sound of sighs , Thick-sobb'd from choking throats among the crowd , That , whispering , gathered close , with dark heads bow'd ; But no man lifted up his voice aloud , For heavy hung o er all the helpless sense of doom . Then , after solemn prayer , The father bade the attendants , tenderly Lift her upon the lurid altar-stone . There was no hope in any face ; each eye bwam tearful , that her own did gaze upon They bound her he _pless hands with mournful care ; T _^ at nu P ng _XufheT _^ n amber shower , Mix'd with the saffron robe , and falling lower , Down from her bare , and cold , white shoulder flung . Upon the heaving breast the pale cheek hung , Suffused with that wild light that roll'd among The pausing crowd , out of the crimson drouth . They held hot hands upon her pleading mouth ; And stifled on faint lips the natural cry . Back from the altar-stone , Slow-moving in his fixed place A little space , _^ The speechless father turn d . No word was said . He wrappd his mantle close about his face , In his dumb grief , without a moan . The lopping axe was lifted over-head . Then suddenly There sounded a strange motion of the sea , Booming far inland ; and above the east A ragged cloud rose slowly , and increas'd . Not one line in the horoscope of Time Is perfect . Oh , what falling off is this , When some grand soul , that else had been sublime , Falls unawares amiss , And stoops its crested strength to sudden crime ! We cannot follow the progress of the piece , nor quote its pathetic and dramatic inventions . The character of Clytemnestra is thorougly original , modern , passionate ; and shows in the writer a power which must hereafter produce striking works . But now having intimated in what we think the excellence of his poem consists , it is right to intimate our opinion on the serious mistake in his design , We pass by minor errors of execution , and come to the capital fault of attempting to reproduce Greek Art in what is accidental , not _* in what is essential . He has taken up the Agamemnon with the desire of rewriting it . Very good ; hut why , in thoroughly mo- demising the spirit , has he attempted an imitation of the antique form ? Why these choruses , which in the Greek Drama were of primary importance , but which in modern art are senseless ? Again , why these constant allu- siens and phrases which only the scholar can seize , and which to the ordinary reader sometimes become pure absurdities : for instance , the hesitating Herald is asked " if an ox has trodden on his tongue . " Every reader of _^ Eschylus knows the allusion , but the English reader is puzzled . More- over , if this Greek fidelity of idiom is thought worth preserving , what be- comes of the abiding _moderiiness of the diction ? If Greek is to bespoken , how comes Owen Meredith to write a passage so outrageous as " the hot blood freezes in its arteries , " when every Greek would have opened wide eyes at the very notion of blood being in the arteries at all—the arteries , as the name imports , were thought to be air-carriers , and were so considered till the time of Galen . We will not press this point . It is enough to hint our objection against all attempts at classical reproduction of forms . The merit of Clytemnestra lies precisely in the opposite direction . We have It ? ft ourselves no room to speak of the other poems at any length . They are inferior to tlie Clytem- ncstra , probably because the greatness of that subject buoyed the poet up . They are not real ; the feelings they express have for the most part a ficti- tious air ; and they are overdone with scene-painting , for which , however , they show decided faculty . Nevertheless we repeat our conviction : Here is another young poet singing on his way to Parnassus ; let the world listen with approval , and the time will come when grander melodies and deeper harmonies will be struck from his Lyre . _~

      June 16, 1855.] The Leader. ' 581

      June 16 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER . ' 581

      How To Live A Hundred Years. De La Longd...

      HOW TO LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS . De la _LongdritdIlumaine et de la _Quantitydc Vic tur h Globe . Par P . Mourons . Paris : 1855 . This book has made a sensation in Paris ; it has already been reviewed in _Blackwood ; and an English translation has just appeared : three circum- stances which determine us to notice it , in spite of Us somewhat arrogant superficiality and mogisteriul twaddle . The subject of Longevity is one interesting to the public , mid perplexing to the physiologist . Every one would be glad to live a century ; every curious intellect would be glad to

      know how such a thing becomes possible . We have already touched on tlie I subject in reviewing the works of Dr . Van Oven and Hufeland ( Leader , Vol . IV ., page 930 , No . 183 ) , and may therefore treat the present work more discursively and popularly . M . Flourens announces in his usual trenchant style that the normal life of man is a hundred years in duration . He might as well have said that thenormal _^ ° / " » * t _™ d * _^ h The _*¦»*¦*»• of longevity which _« , e recorded , although more numerous than is popularly supposed , are extremely rare in proportion to the vast numbers who fall short of the secular period ,-viz , one in ten thousand . And M . Flourens is not only unhappy in drawing an argument from such rare instances , and assuming tliat in the vast proportion i _^ _sf ich con d 1 s ar r n ? en _- 1 ' _^ re r n of _s- remature f / fatl _s injudicious use made of life ; he is in direct contradiction with fact and physiology in asserting that sobriety is the main cause of longevity . Fact l f lls us tIlat verv many of the longest livers have led very irregular , very labonous , and some very intemperate lives ; physiology tells us that longevity in itself—apart from all external circumstances—is an hereditary quality , as much as length of limb , or susceptibility of nerve : it is part and parcel of the constitution , and therefore is not to be determined by a course of hygiene . Sobriety and placidness of life will not make one organism endure a centtirv ; intemperance , hardship , irregularity will not prevent another organism enduring a century and a quarter . The reader will not misinterpret _thete observations into an assertion that hyg iene is indifferent , or that lives ore not shortened by intemperance . What we mean is , that Longevity qua Longevity is above and bey ond hygiene . This is no more than saying that talent is born with us , quite independent of any education the talent may receive through circumstance : certain opportunities will favour talent , certain opportunities will misdirect or hamper it , but no opportunities will create it . Men have a talent for long _lifef f N _™ * is _™* y of remark that M . Flourens , when he quits twaddling f ° * a moment , and comes to physiology agrees with Buffon that longevity d ° es not depend on climate , race , or food : it depends on nothing external , ' " e savs > " it depends solely on the intrinsic virtue of our organs . " _Cleaily it does ; and this " intrinsic virtue" is transmitted from parent to child in the same proportion as other qualities are transmitted . Until we can seize the cause , or causes , which determine in one organism a succession of changes , the termination of which is death—until we can say why one man is ten years undergoing a series of changes , which another man undergoes in three , we are powerless before this question of longevity . The average length of life indicates but roughly the average period in which these changes take _, because the _calculation is affected by diseases and accidents . But ' ' . .. _,. ,. . J .. , , , , „ - no except _. _ons throw any . light . A man may live to a hundred and fifty , which is double the ordinary length of life _; and Buffon tells us of a horse which to his knovvlege Jived fifty years , that is , double the length of life ordinary to horses . Aristotle tells us the camel has been known to live a century ; its ordinary term is forty or fifty years . Haller speaks of a lion dying at sixty , that is three times the age of ordinary lions . Life is marked by a succession of Ages , the terminal Age being Death . Each of these Ages—dentition , second dentition , puberty , manhood , old age—indicates a culmination of changes which have been going on with greater or less rapidity , and it is on this rapidity that the epoch of culmination depends . Thus , although within certain limits we can fix the period of each epoch , yet there is considerable oscillation in the times taken by individuals : one child cuts its teeth earlier than another , one reaches puberty earlier than another , one grows old earlier than another . But no child cuts its teeth at twenty or dies at two hundred . Further , we may remark , that these oscillations are greater the nearer we approach the end ; simply , because life is more active , the organic changes are more rapid at the beginning of our career than at the end . Hence the differences of longevity are not observable so much in boyhood as in old age ; the man who is going to live a century cuts his teeth and reaches puberty as early , or nearly so , as the man who is only capable of living half a century . M . Flourens proposes a new classification of the Ages : he makes youth extend from twenty to forty ; a conclusion very agreeable to us young dogs , who begin to trace a few white hairs mingling their gravity with locks of insolent brown ; but although we would willingly impress such a conclusion on all the ladies of our acquaintance , we cannot ask the dear reader to accept it . And as to the commencement of old age being thrown on to the seventieth year , we know not what we shall say to such a proposition thirty years hence at present it excites a smile . We have done with M . Flourens and his book . Should it fall in the reader ' s way he is advised to read it , for , in spite of an offensive foppory in the style , and a sad want of scientific consistency , it contains many intcrcsting details , and one good physiological idea ( that on the growth of the bomes , which was quoted in our columns , p . 427 ) ; we warn him , however , against pinning his faith on its conclusions . Another Frenchman , M . Charles Lejoncourt , published in 1842 a work called Galerie des Ccntenaires , which , should it . fall in your way , you are navised to run through . From his tables we learn that in France an average . of 150 examples of seculur existence are to he found annually . - _* - ' ie examples of longevity he adduces are striking ; they show how hereditary the qualit _} ' is , and how it triumphs over modes of living . Here we have a day-labourer dying at the age of 108 ; his father died at 104 ; his grandfatlier at 108 ; his daughter then _li-ving was 80 . Here we have a saddler whose father died at 113 : his grandfather at 112 ; and he himself at _llo . wien he was 113 years of age , Louis XIV asked him what he had done to prolong his life : " Sire , " he replied , " since I was fifty I have acted on two principles , I have shut my heart . and opened my wine-cellar ' Here is the widow of a labourer 110 years old , with all her teeth , and her hair still badnrid abundant . At Dieppe there is n woman of lflO , whose lather hvcti 1 to _l , and whose uncle to 113 . But these arc nothing o Jean _Golembrewski , _^ a Pole , who , living » ' 18 _'" } _'J' '' " _' _j' ? _" _^ rt ' _^ _HvJcamSns unde ? Napoleon , army as common soldier , had _e _« vt _^ hud survived the torn hie cam , , a . gn in \ _^ u _^™ a tC J o [ U hia grandmother was still in robust health . ma « n » ' _* - _^ » at 130 . C 11 « W tn hear out whot was said cjirjy in the article These examples suffice to _be » r out w » _m w' _/ _rt V *

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1855, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/sldr_16061855/page/5/